Today's notes:

Context:

Key Concepts:

What is God's righteousness observed doing?:

Drawing a distinction between the spirit of the law and the hard rule of traditions.

Pointing to simple illustrations of where the traditions have the opposite effect from what God both intended and commanded.

What does this tell us about God's righteousness?:

Righteousness is being perceived by man in two separate near opposite ways, one way God's, the other way man's. Man's is largely the things that they feel they can do to earn possession of righteousness they have determined. God's is largely the things HE has done and is doing to move man back into HIS.

The question must be "what has God commanded" and "how must we obey that". If God commands one thing and we command ourselves another, well then, our shifted obedience must be halted and set by HIM back on course. If a man had one task to do and in the course of doing that went about doing all this other stuff secondary to the task without progressing toward the stated objective we would call that man obsessive compulsive. Self righteousness is no different, it can barely hear the task as stated for all the other things it thinks of itself to do.

How is man reacting?:

They are grouping into an opposing force, looking for every opportunity to put Jesus down. To best do that they have to appear not to publicly attack the beloved Master (not yet), but to attack His disciples therefore Him by implication. The support for Jesus must be taken down before Jesus Himself can be.

Notes:

While thought to be sanitary, the gesture of hand washing as they managed it was mostly symbolic; hardly enough from keeping germs as we now know them from entering into the immune system. Better than nothing certainly, everything that they made it to be shamefully not.

The issue being discussed however is not sanitation, it is the purity of the soul. If one presumes that one can be kept from the issues of the heart that truly defile a man spiritually like those listed simply by washing their hands or tidying their exterior environment a bit, they are not even discussing the same issue.

Traditions can be either good or bad as detailed by Paul filter:NT-EPISTLES tradition . In the spiritual sense there is no middle ground, you are either on track or you run crosswise. The tradition of these elders began as interpretations of the law, they soon became interpretations of righteousness which quickly devolved into legislation of one influential groups' righteousness upon everybody else; having little or nothing to do with the Law as presented originally. The problem with interpretations is that they are often built upon the false interpretation of the premise as actually meant to be. By the time they are instituted enough to become tradition they fully hardened puddles of glue.

Who taught the masses all these many traditions? The scribes. Whose association to the scribes is immediately benefited in this partnership? The Pharisees. How many scribes are Pharisee? Likely a good many. How many Pharisee are scribes? Probably but a few. Who receives the most benefit then from this public collaboration? Certainly the Pharisees. Watch for this collaboration to continue, we'll get some Sadducee in on the act shortly as well.

As Jesus commanded us to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, surely He intended it to begin at the source. We begin to see the source that they are operating from in theirs, now to see the source that we would hopefully begin to operate from in HIS.

Key Messages:

What does this say about our present condition?

EVERYTHING! Probably more than we'd ever know.

Priority. Is it your hands, your belly or your soul? Is it keeping yourself above defilement without concern for those below you? Is it toward what men expect you to do or what God has command you to do? Is it me doing this to make myself more presentable to God or is God doing this all this and me simply obeying wherever it is HE is directing me (even if it appears to others as getting dirty)? Lot's of questions, right? Only one answer though!